Insanity Can Be Compelling May 4, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in ESP, mental illness.Tags: Delusions, ESP, mental illness
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The case for insanity is compelling.
In early February 2008, at the beginning of my journey into a world of my own making, I thought I had Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). I talked with people who passed through a little room inside my head. I had lots of powerful friends who hung on my every word and who were dedicated to making my life as care-free as possible. Some of my close friends included Oprah Winfrey, The Dalai Lama, and Bill and Melinda Gates. Melinda was actually a long-lost sister.
Then there was my job situation. In my fantasy world, my boss, via ESP, directed me to quit my (real) job. So I did. Then, via ESP, he begged for my return, promising me more money and better control over my job. In the meantime, Bill and Melinda Gates offered me a job at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For twice the amount of money.
As part of my compensation package, Melinda Gates told me to pick out a new car and a new wardrobe. So I trotted down to the nearest Lexus dealership and picked out a beautiful shiny gold brand new Lexus convertible car. I went shopping for my new wardrobe, spending thousands of dollars for clothing that I never even got the chance to wear. I wrote checks for these things, with the understanding that Bill Gates would put the money in my account to pay for my purchases.
One of my closest friends was a “time-turner”, able to revisit the past and change it, bringing me things like great parking spaces. He also designed special makeup just for me, manufactured it, and managed to have it waiting for me on a shelf at the makeup department of my nearby Fred Meyer store.
I decided that I had to move to a house on the beach, so I spent hours scouring the neighborhoods next to a waterfront park, looking for the perfect house. Finding it, I let Bill Gates make the purchase, confident that I would be moving in shortly. To fill that house, I spent hours shopping for new furniture.
I acquired $2 million in jewelry, including a 3 carat yellow diamond ring in a platinum setting (put at a nearby Target store by my time-turner friend). At the Goodwill in downtown Seattle, I found an abalone bracelet that had once been owned by my (Mermaid) grandmother.
I had long conversations with my dog, who had a deep voice when he talked. My cat inquired about my health, and I had a few close friends who were trees.
Last but not least, I was a genuine Mermaid. Fish talked to me (literally). I had fins for feet. I had a beautiful tail.
I was beautiful. I was energetic. I was wealthy.
Now tell me that mental illness is terrible.
Mental Illness and Stalking April 26, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, mental illness.Tags: Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, mental illness
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Stalking is a matter of perspective. From the standpoint of the stalker who is stalking a celebrity, the stalker is convinced that he has a very real, very personal connection to the person he’s stalking. He would be shocked to learn that what he’s doing- trying to fulfill the celebrity’s perceived request for that contact- is viewed by law enforcement as well as the celebrity in question as stalking. How can it be stalking, he reasons, when the person he’s accused of stalking wants desperately to see him? It must be a misunderstanding.
When I was slipping into the final stages of my delusion (right before I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital) I was absolutely convinced that I had Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), and that Bill and Melinda Gates were among my many powerful friends-friends that included the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey- who talked with me via ESP. When they talked with me, it came through as a voice in my head. For those not familiar with the Gateses, they are some of the richest people in the world. Anyway, one of my hobbies was making jewelry, so it wasn’t surprising that (as part of my delusion) Bill and Melinda Gates begged me to make them some jewelry.
I agreed to their request for some of my fabulous jewelry, provided they give me direction on their tastes. One of the capabilities of people who shared ESP with me was their ability to see the world through my eyes. Literally. It’s kind of complicated to explain, but suffice it to say that they looked out through my eyes and saw everything that I saw. So it was perfectly natural for Bill and Melinda to wander around the bead shop with me, picking out beads for their own special necklaces as if they were actually in the room with me. When Bill began picking out expensive stones, I balked. But Bill assured me that price was no object, since he (the richest man in the world) would be reimbursing me in the very near future for the money I spent. With that guarantee from the richest man in the world, I allowed him to choose whatever stones he wanted. So at his direction, I purchased expensive stones for the necklaces of him and his wife Melinda.
“We” returned to my home where I spread the expensive loot out on my kitchen table and began putting the necklaces together with “their” direction. When “we” finished the jewelry, “we” discussed how they were going to get the necklaces from me. Should I mail them? Should I send them via UPS? Should I send them to their house in Medina? Or to Microsoft’s campus in Redmond? At first, “they” directed me to mail them to the Gates’ in care of their (real) nonprofit organization, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After further discussion, “we” agreed that I would give the necklaces to them when I met them in person, which was going to be in the very near future. In the real world, I live about 20 minutes from the Gateses. So the thought of driving to their home didn’t seem out of reach at all. Fortunately for all of us, I ended up in the mental hospital before I could do any real damage.
It is easy for a delusional person to cross the line into what appears to the real world as “stalking”. I had lost touch with reality to the point where I was convinced that the Gateses wanted their jewelry so badly that had “they” insisted, I would have, without question, driven to their home in Medina (about 20 minutes from my home) with the intent of personally delivering the necklaces to them as they had requested. I would have been absolutely convinced that they were desperate for my jewelry, and wouldn’t have believed anyone who tried to tell me differently.
Had I followed that plan of action (rather than wait to meet them as we finally agreed), I would have been carted off to jail, labeled a stalker. But in my mind, I would have been absolutely certain that the Gates’ were dying to see me, and I would have insisted that this was so.
In revealing this very personal and embarrassing episode that was part of my psychotic delusion, I hope to show how easy it is for someone suffering from delusions to become a stalker. I ask for the law profession to understand that when they are investigating a stalker, in reality they’re likely with a delusional mentally ill person. I ask for them to show that “stalker” some compassion by getting an immediate psychological evaluation before sending him off to jail. With proper medical intervention, their delusion, like mine, will evaporate and the psychotic individual will return to the real world. And when it’s all over and they’re medicated and back in their right mind, they, like I, will be extremely embarrassed and ashamed of their behavior.
The Lexus and Financial Ruin February 27, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in mental illness, Mental Illness and Bankruptcy.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Mental Illness and Bankrupcy
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In the early stages of my psychotic break from reality, I believed that Bill and Melinda Gates were good friends of mine. Hanging on my every word (via ESP), they willingly financed my needs and wants. They even offered me a job working for their foundation (via ESP), which I accepted.
Part of my compensation package for working at their foundation, I believed, was a new car. They told me (via ESP) to go find a car that I wanted, and that they would reimburse me for it.
As I walked onto the Lexus dealership car lot, I met a salesman who said he had many Microsoft employees as clients. He alluded to the fact that the Gates’ had a “tab” there, so it was natural for me to be reimbursed for my purchase.
When he asked me what I was looking for, I pointed to his gold ring and told him I was looking for a car that color. (Note: I know very little about cars). Taking in my appearance (I was all in gold), he smiled. “A gold car for a gold lady?” he asked. I nodded.
He walked me to the only gold car in a sea of silver, which happened to be a Lexus convertible coupe. At $55,000, the used car was a bargain, he said. He offered to take me for a ride in the car, and we rushed down the freeway, top open. Pulling off at a little park, we changed seats. Upon our return, I told him I would take the car.
The salesman brought me to the finance department, where we discussed my payment method. With assurances (via ESP) from Bill Gates that he would cover my check, I wrote a $55,000 check without sufficient funds to pay for the car.
After the deal was done, the salesman offered to meet me at a nearby restaurant to buy me lunch. As we sat eating fish and chips and clam chowder, I told him that I was a Mermaid, and so was he (actually, a Merman). He didn’t seem surprised at my revelation. He said he was getting ready to buy a house, and asked for advice. I explained that as a Merman, he needed a place close to the water and that he needed to swim daily. He was gratified at my advice, thanking me for his new-found knowledge of his Merman status.
As I returned home with my new car, I noted that my husband was on the roof, installing some trim on a new window. Not bothering to tell him about the new car, I left the paperwork and keys on the kitchen counter, and took the dog for a walk.
Coming down from the roof to get a drink of water a few minutes later, he saw the paperwork sitting on the counter, and realized that the new car sitting in front of the driveway, which he assumed belonged to a neighbor, was actually his.
Shocked and dismayed, he confronted me with the purchase, insisting that we return the car that very second. Unwillingly, I rode with him back to the dealership, pissed. He disappeared into the building while I sat outside in my new car. A little while later, he returned to the car, telling me to get out as he had just returned it. We drove home in my old broken-down pickup truck in silence.
To his credit, my husband performed a small miracle. Despite the fact that there’s no three day grace period for car purchases, he managed to convince the dealership to allow him to return the $55,000 Lexus Convertible – paid for with a “hot” check- within hours of it hitting our driveway.
That was just one incident among many. My husband went through Hell for weeks, watching helplessly as I continued to bring home purchase after purchase, wondering what I was going to do next. He could only watch as I went through tens of thousands of dollars in a very short period of time.
Finally, I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, giving my husband some breathing room to do damage control. Enlisting my mom and sister’s help, they piled all of the clothes and shoes in a big heap on the living room floor, spending hours painstakingly matching merchandise to receipts, then heading to the mall to return everything they could. They looked for, but couldn’t find, a $500 ring and a $300 pendant, never guessing in a million years that they were at the beach, in a hole I had dug while wading around in 2 feet of water.
Damage control underway, my husband turned his attention to the bigger picture. My purse in his possession, he tore up all my credit cards. He flagged our credit to prevent me from opening another account without his knowledge. And, reaching beyond his legal limit, he –without my permission or knowledge- closed all of our credit and bank accounts, opening new ones that I had no access to or even knowledge of.
Coming out of the mania, I was ashamed and embarrassed at my conduct, even though my husband took pains to explain that the financial train wreck was, like my tremendous medical bills, another cost of my mental illness. He refused to consider my actions an act of moral bankruptcy.
I could do nothing to atone for my sins except put in place as much protection (from myself) as possible in case I again became manic. In the end, I realized that it came down to eliminating my access to all of our accounts. I have no credit cards. I don’t know what our bank account numbers are or what our bank balance is. In fact, I know nothing about our finances. My husband dispenses cash to me- me, a professional woman who made over $100K a year. And that’s the way it has to be.
The Mermaid and His Alien Baseball Team January 24, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, ESP, Hallucinations, mental illness.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, mental illness
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One morning, I was just finishing up swimming my laps (I thought I was a Mermaid) when I noticed a man getting into the lane right next to mine. Rising to my feet, I told the swimmer that he could have my lane, as I was done swimming.
He thanked me, but he said that he didn’t like to swim in that far lane. When I asked him why, he explained that it made him uncomfortable but he didn’t know why. I explained that he was probably sensitive to the energy buildup along the bottom edges and corners of the pool. Instead of looking at me like I had lost my mind, he became very interested in what I had to say. Fascinated, in fact. Wanting to discuss the concept further, he asked to meet me at a nearby Starbucks in about 15 minutes, to have coffee and talk.
But I hadn’t left the pool yet. Dunking my head in the water to clear my mask, I noticed the familiar faint green tint to his skin. He was a Merman.
Arriving at the Starbucks a bit early, I purchased my coffee and contemplated the logo on the cup. A two-tailed Mermaid. Hm. A Sign. I settled down to wait for my new Merman friend. Shortly he arrived, purchasing his coffee and joining me at a small table by a fireplace, surrounded by other patrons.
Explaining that I saw the green tinge of his skin in the pool and that he was a Merman, I was prepared for him to walk out on me. But he didn’t flinch. Instead, he insisted that we move outside where we wouldn’t be overheard. Once there, he told me his little secret: he was a mind-reader. Then he offered to demonstrate his skill, telling me to think of a word and to concentrate hard on that word.
As I sat across the table from him, I concentrated on the word “Abracadabra” as hard as I could, even mentally painstakingly writing the word on a blackboard in my mind, willing him to succeed.
Although he tried many times to come up with the word I was thinking of, he just couldn’t do it. He didn’t even come close. Finally, he said had to leave. We parted, not even exchanging names or phone numbers. He didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t know who he was. And that was okay by me.
But before he left, he told me about his Alien baseball team. He said that there were lots of Alien baseball teams throughout the galaxy, and that they played each other in games that were similar to the ones played here on Earth. Then he offered to show me pictures of his Alien baseball team. When I assented, he pulled out his wallet and extracted several baseball cards.
On each card was a photo of an Alien dressed in a baseball uniform. The player’s name, unpronounceable, was written underneath the photo. Statistics and the player’s position were written on the reverse side. In all, the cards were virtually undistinguishable from regular baseball cards with the exception of the players. He explained that he owned an entire baseball team of Aliens, but he never told me where the games were played or invited me to watch a game with him.
The next day, the word “Abracadabra” was written in blue letters on a whiteboard hanging on the wall. I was shocked. Directly below that word, written in green, was another word: dandelion. Clearly the Merman had returned to the pool and had written the words on the whiteboard. I understood writing the word that was in my mind, but I had no idea what the word dandelion meant. Then it came to me: that was the Merman’s name. Dan De Lion.
Was Dan De Lion real? I don’t know. If he was, then he was as mentally ill as I was. If he wasn’t real, then I was one of those people you see sitting in restaurants talking to themselves.
How Long Does it Take to Become Psychotic January 8, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, Disability Claim, ESP, mental illness.Tags: Delusions, Disability Claim, ESP, Involuntary Committment, mental illness
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Back when I was working as a Project Manager in downtown Seattle, my employer- let’s call them M Construction- paid for a long and short term disability policy as part of my compensation package.
As the stress on that job escalated to impossible levels due to the fact that I had no support staff (no matter how hard I tried to get it), I began to believe that I had ESP, and that I could communicate with my flesh-and-blood bosses via that ESP. As my mental illness rapidly progressed, I became more enmeshed in my delusional world, communicating with my bosses via ESP several times a day. They knew, I believed, the untenable position I was in.
As the pressure on my job escalated to impossible levels, we (my ESP bosses and I) hatched a plan. They directed me to in effect hold my job hostage. I was supposed to tell the flesh-and-blood boss that I had a job offer with a competitor- someone whom the company had recently lost a lot of employees to. The result was supposed to be leverage to get the staff I needed in order to perform my job. At the direction of my ESP bosses, I made that threat to my flesh-and-blood bosses. But instead of getting the staff I needed, the flesh-and-blood bosses wished me well and held an exit interview.
During my exit interview, as I sat in a Starbucks with my flesh-and-blood boss across the table from me, my flesh-and-blood boss wrung his hands, asking me why I didn’t say something sooner. I tried to argue that point, saying that I would stay if I was given the staff I needed. The flesh-and-blood boss said it was too late, while the ESP boss told me this discussion was part of the ultimate plan to get me that staff. At the end of the interview, I was officially out of a job. But my imaginary ESP boss told me to sit back and wait for things to happen.
After a few days of waiting around for their phone call to return to work, my ESP boss told me to give him a call, which I did. My flesh-and-blood boss tried to argue with me, telling me that I had quit. I explained that I was only doing what he told me to do. Confusedly, he ended the phone call, telling me once again that I had quit. During this conversation with my flesh-and-blood boss, that same man (in the form of ESP) told me this conversation was all part of the plan, and that the offer to return to work was imminent but that he couldn’t say so over the phone. “Just relax” was my direction.
As the weeks leading up to my ultimate involuntary commitment wore on, I continued to maintain regular phone contact with my flesh-and-blood bosses, truly believing that my return to M Construction was imminent, despite his continued assurances that my job had been filled. When my husband asked me how my job hunt was coming along, I explained that there had been a mistake and that I would be returning to M Construction soon. I didn’t even bother to apply for unemployment, because I knew my return to work was imminent.
Within three weeks of holding my job hostage, I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. During the three weeks at the hospital and the subsequent months in recovery, the furthest thing from my mind was the insurance policy. But as I began to mentally re-enter the real world, my husband reminded me of that policy and asked me to check on it. Digging around the house, I located the policy. Sure enough, I was covered!
I called M Construction’s Human Resources department to start the claim process, only to be informed that I had quit before entering the hospital. Policy null and void. Submitting the claim anyway, I wasn’t surprised when Prudential’s denial letter arrived, saying the same thing: I had quit before I became crazy.
Upon further consideration, I realized that what I really had was an on-the-job injury, just like I was hit on the head with a 2X4. But the 2X4 in my case was the stress that caused me to go psychotic.
There was no doubt that I had become sick. My involuntary commitment was physical evidence of that. But one burning question remained: How long before my hospitalization was I psychotic/sick? Was it before I “quit” my job, or afterward? How long does it take a person to become psychotic? More than three weeks or less than three weeks?
I hired an attorney to find out.
A Case for Involuntary Commitment January 1, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Involuntary Committment, Medication, Mental Hospital, mental illness.Tags: Delusions, ESP, Involuntary Committment, mental illness
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As part of my psychotic experience, I believed that I had ESP (extra sensory perception). I thought I had famous people as part of my entourage, hanging on every brilliant “word” coming out of my “mouth”. At first, these conversations took place entirely inside my head, without me uttering a single word. However, towards the end of my psychotic experience, my need to talk out loud to them became very strong. Too strong to ignore.
Thanking God for Bluetooth technology, I decided that talking out loud to my friends would be mistaken by everyone who witnessed it as simply conversing on the cell phone, as long as I had my “ear bud” in my ear. So I began wearing my “ear bud” everywhere except to bed.
In this section from my memoir (called I Thought I Was A Mermaid), I had just driven to Walmart (really) to go shopping with my (imaginary) friends.
(Note to blog readers: As far as the people with me go, they were a mixed bag. Although I had never met the real Claudia, she was in fact a real person whom I had heard about and wanted to meet. Mike was actually based on my (real) boss at Mortenson, where I was a project manager on a $55 million ice hockey rink under construction. Bill Gates needs no introduction, except to say that although I had never met him in real life, my circle of friends (really) included someone who had (really) worked with he and Melinda Gates, his wife, at Microsoft back in the day.
Rolling into the colossal Walmart parking lot, I turned off the key.
Me: Here we are, everyone!
Claudia: I can’t believe how nice the cars are. I thought they’d be all dumpy and old and stuff. But they’re not too bad. Even a Lexus or two.(Note to blog readers: the people I conversed with could see through my eyes, so they saw exactly what I saw).
Bill Gates: I’ve never been to a Walmart before. But I know someone who has. And she’s dying to meet you. Oprah Winfrey, meet Kathy. Kathy, meet Oprah. I was shocked, to put it mildly.
Me: I never expected to meet you in a million years, Ms. Winfrey.
Oprah: Call me Oprah, Kathy. And it’s very nice to meet you.
Me: It’s nice to meet you also.
Oprah: I’ve been hearing a lot about you, Kathy. Bill and Melinda Gates are friends of mine. When I heard they knew you, I begged them for an introduction. And it’s so funny that I’d meet you here in a Walmart parking lot. I grew up with Walmart.
***
During my three week involuntary hospitalization (at Fairfax Mental Hospital), I continued to believe that I had ESP. The day I was released from Fairfax, I met my new psychiatrist for the very first time. After my meeting with him, I believed that I talked with him via ESP during my car ride home.
My point is that it took over a month for the medication, initially forced on me during my hospitalization, to finally kick in enough that I no longer believed I had ESP. Without involuntary commitment and its accompanying medication, I would still believe I had ESP and I would still be talking out loud to my imaginary friends. At first I fought tooth and nail, but in the end, involuntary commitment saved my family and I from a terrible fate.
Anatomy of a Breakdown September 23, 2010
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, Hallucinations, Involuntary Committment, mental illness.Tags: Delusions, Hallucinations, mental illness
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Looking back at my diaries of 2 years ago, I again became enmeshed in my identity crisis. It reminded me of how difficult it was to lose who I was. And to find out that who I was wasn’t exactly pleasant.
Before I became psychotic, I was Kathy 1. Then, when I became psychotic, so many things about me changed that I lost my identity as Kathy 1. While I was psychotic, this change from Kathy seemed a very natural turn of events, since my delusion had included my belief that I had always been someone else. According to my delusion, I was, and always had been, a mermaid named Pangea. For 48 years I just never knew it.
During my psychotic break, Kathy 1 was no more, wiped out of existence, replaced by an entirely new personality: Pangea the Mermaid. Transfering my identity from Kathy 1 to Pangea was easy. It was an act initiated by me. It was an act controlled by me. I was drawn in gradually over a four month span of time into my new identity as Pangea. My final act of recognition of this sea change was that I planned to change my real legal name to Pangea. But before I could carry out my plan, I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
When I was hospitalized, the staff began the long process of stabilizing me. Part of that process was administration of medication that pushed me out of my delusion that I was Pangea. Logically, removing Pangea from the equation should have left me back at identifying with Kathy 1. Unfortunately (or not), this didn’t happen.”
It’s difficult to put into words, but the person who was Kathy 1 had certain thought patterns, certain ways of doing things, certain tastes in clothing, hair styles, and expressions of who she was, as well as a much faster speed of thinking, and other brain-related characteristics that made up her very soul. Her very existence. Those characteristics are gone.
There’s a void where my identity is supposed to be. I try to feel a familiar pattern of thinking or feeling or being and there’s no familiarity at all. Zero. I have no idea who I am. It’s as if I woke up in someone else’s brain. I have no reference points. I’m in a strange place and can’t find my way back to who I was before. But then do I really want to return to that person?
Through counseling, I learned to analyze all of the little choices that Kathy 1 made in her life that brought her the total control that she was looking for, which ultimately led to her complete break with reality. Little things and big things loomed in my head. Overall, I realized that my efforts at control not only led to my complete break with reality, but in the process had turned me into what I would term a “flaming bitch”. I had attempted to control virtually every facet of my life down to the last speck of dirt in the house to the greatest extent possible. Everything was always about me. It was embarrassing to come to this realization at the age of 48. How horrible, how narcissistic. It was depressing to consider all of the wasted years, all of the misery, that I had inflicted on people, including those I loved, through the years. Was there anything I could do to make up for my past bad behavior?
I need to find out how to get me back to who I was before- only nicer. And if I can’t do that, then I need to figure out who I am now. For lack of a better word, I’ll call myself Kathy 2. I need help to discover who she is.
Hearing Voices and A New Identity September 16, 2010
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Delusions, ESP, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, mental illness.Tags: Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, mental illness
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I admit the first time I heard the voice of my boss, Mark, while driving down the freeway alone in my car, I was surprised. He wasn’t in the car or on the cell phone, and yet he spoke to me as clearly as if he were sitting next to me. I realized immediately that I had a special power: ESP. It didn’t seem unusual at all to be gifted with special powers, and it didn’t even cross my mind that I could be mentally ill. I was simply gifted.
I assumed from the very first time I heard Mark’s voice that I had control of my ESP. I assumed that I would be able to simply stop hearing the voices whenever I chose to, and that was how it worked. At first.
Then things changed, and suddenly I was no longer in charge. The voices were. As the voices slowly increased in number- around 50 at the high- they also increased their grip on my mind, ultimately refusing to leave. When I eventually begged and pleaded with them to leave, they wouldn’t go away. That’s where the strength of my personality played into the situation.
I should have been terrified when the voices wouldn’t leave. I should have sought immediate medical intervention when I felt my mind being smothered by theirs, wrapping their thoughts around mine and choking me off like morning glories on a rhododendron.
But because of the nature of my personality, I felt strong enough to handle the situation. I had always succeeded in everything I had undertaken before, so this wouldn’t be any different. I fought hard to keep a sense of self, knowing that I would prevail, despite the increased smothering of my ideas by theirs. To keep things from unraveling, I learned not to express fear. To express fear brought on the evil voices. But to embrace the voices with love kept the voices slightly off-balance. Where there should have been fear in me there was a sort of pity for them.
My saving grace was that the voices never learned how to read my own independent thoughts. This situation is hard to articulate even now, but suffice it to say that they tried to smother and replace my thoughts with their own, but they never knew what my thoughts- my real thoughts- were.
Trying to maintain my separate being from being taken over by the voices was like being in a room with someone fighting for possession of increasingly more space. Never satisfied with taking just a part of the room, they moved their line of possession to increasingly larger sections of the room. As long as I could maintain even a tiny portion of the room, I could hold on to my identity. That was what protected me from total destruction.
Eventually, the voices took over my entire mind, cleanly breaking my mind off and replacing it with their own, plunging me into a total and complete break from reality. Their reality became my own.
In the days and hours before my involuntary commitment to the mental hospital, my independent personality was a sliver of what it had been before the mental illness took over. As my husband drove me to the emergency room, the last shreds of what used to be me disappeared, replaced in totality by Pangea the Mermaid, the identity of the new inhabitant of my body. The old Kathy was lost forever.
Only strong medication administered in a mental hospital under constant supervision broke their thoughts from my mind. But as their claw-like grip on my mind receded, what remained in the room was not what used to be there. The thoughts that took over my mind also took over my identity, and the medication that wiped out Pangea never replaced it with the old Kathy. My former personality was destroyed first by the voices and then by the medication. The mind emerging from the tunnel isn’t the mind that entered it.
As you might imagine, this situation created an identity crisis of major proportions. I’m not the old Kathy, and neither am I Pangea. I’m someone entirely new. And that’s where therapy comes in. My therapist has slowly, over a two year period of time, helped me define and identify who this new person is. I hate to think about how empty my life would be without the help of my counselor. Her assistance in rebuilding me from scratch has made life worth living for me and my friends and family. Without her help, I would be in a horrible place- neither one nor the other. Now I realize that I’m not Kathy 1, and not Pangea. I’m Kathy 2, and that’s just fine.
Psychotic Wife Tests Marriage August 5, 2010
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, Hallucinations, Involuntary Committment, Mental Hospital, mental illness.Tags: Bipolar Disorder, Delusions, Hallucinations, Mental Hospitals, mental illness
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My nervous breakdown tested my marriage in a major way. I’m very lucky that my marriage has survived that horrible ordeal- at least for the present.
From the time the voices started in February to the time I was hospitalized in late May, the voices tried to convince me to divorce my husband of 25 years.
The first reason that the voices told me to divorce him was to protect my newly acquired $1.5 million jewelry collection. This collection included a supposedly “yellow diamond” ring acquired at Target for $20, which the voices assured me was actually a real yellow diamond ring worth a million dollars (not true) and an abalone bracelet that I bought from Goodwill that the voices said was an antique bracelet once owned by my Great-grandmother Mermaid and now worth $500,000 (also not true).
The second reason they said I should divorce him was that he was the real behind-the-scenes person responsible for locking me up in a mental hospital, and he was going to keep me there as long as he legally could (not true) and that my only chance of escape from my “prison” was to divorce him as soon as possible. So the first chance I got at the mental hospital I called my attorney to get the divorce proceedings started. But as the medication began to take effect, I lost the ability to follow through with my actions because I became lethargic and confused. Finally, as the medication began to cause the delusions and hallucinations to go away, I came to realize that my husband wasn’t really trying to keep me locked up, and that I really didn’t have a $1.5 million jewelry collection for him to go after.
After I returned home and began to realize the magnitude of the damage I inflicted both personally and financially, I became convinced that he was going to divorce me, and that he was just waiting for me to get well enough to divorce him. After all, why would he stay?
Besides the paranoia about what I perceived as my impending divorce, I was undergoing a major medication-induced identity crisis.
The reality was that Bob was free to divorce me at any time, and many less patient men would have simply walked away from me at numerous points. Some husbands would have left back in February or May, when I started talking about wanting a divorce, or in late May when I was spending tens of thousands of dollars. Others would have served me divorce papers in the hospital, as happened to some of my fellow patients. Still other spouses would have waited until I was on my feet again, able to take care of myself, before cutting the cord.
He put up with the trials of living with a woman going through a severe break with reality, including the delusions and paranoia that accompanied the break. He watched helplessly as an out-of-control woman who was legally still his wife but whom he didn’t recognize begin to dismantle his financial future by spending thousands of dollars on clothes and plants and even a $50,000 Lexus convertible.
Then, he suffered through the three weeks I spent at a mental hospital, unable to share that fact with anyone due to the tremendous stigma attached to that fact. As if the fact that I was at a mental hospital wasn’t shocking enough, he found the courage to visit me on a daily basis, despite my less-than-pleasant reception ( I thought he was holding me there on purpose against my will). He didn’t understand what kind of world I inhabited, but realized that I wasn’t really “there” when he visited me, but nevertheless suffered through his daily visits with me anyway. He watched as I tried to take up smoking. He listened when I continued to ask him for a divorce, even listening patienly as I gave him a piece of paper that represented a preliminary breakdown of the assets I planned to receive in our upcoming divorce settlement.
Even when he saw that I was not getting better, and when I ignored him when he visited, he still hung in there. He understood the very real possibility that my mind might be forever locked up in my fantasy world, unable to return to the real world. He realized that he might have to take care of me – what was left of me- alone, might have to raise our kids- alone.
My real road to recovery didn’t begin to materialize until several weeks after I was released. But as the medication that would bring me back to the real world began to take effect, the side effects from the medication were another nightmare. Depression, suicide thoughts, Parkinson’s disease symptoms, grogginess, fainting, constant crying, weight gain, and a myriad of other medication-induced symptoms became the norm. I couldn’t read, couldn’t drive, could barely walk, had balance problems, couldn’t comb my hair or peel a banana or make my bed. I was anxiety-riddled, having to have my days planned out to the last minute or I’d become miserable. I was almost totally helpless, and there was no guarantee that my physical health would ever return. He supported me through that horrible period without complaint. He was always there for me.
As my side effects slowly began to diminish over time, and as I again returned to the land of the living, some of the pressure is off. But without the love and support of him and my family, I would still be in the psychotic world, disconnected from reality, for the rest of my life. I’m one of the few lucky ones who has managed to find their way back.
Mental Illness and The Law: How We Got Where We Are June 29, 2010
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in History, Insanity, Involuntary Committment, Mental Hospital, mental illness, Mental Illness and Medication, Psychotic.Tags: Delusions, Insanity, Involuntary Committment, Mental Hospitals, mental illness, Mental Illness and Murder, Psychotic
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If you want to change things, first you need to understand how they got the way they are. In the case of mental illness law, politicians and lawyers had the best of intentions, but as with other ventures, the devil was in the details. The unintended consequences of their actions continue to remain the source of frustration and even danger.
In his 1946 article “Bedlam 1946: Most Mental Hospitals Are A Shame and A Disgrace” http://www.mnddc.org/parallels2/prologue/6a-bedlam/bedlam-life1946.pdf in Life Magazine, Albert Maisel made the case that mental hospitals were terrible institutions. The final paragraph of his article summarized his point succinctly: “Given the facts…the people of any state will rally… to put an end to concentration camps that masquerade as ( mental) hospitals and to make cure rather than incarceration the goal of their mental institutions.”
While the sentiment is perfectly understandable given the horrific conditions he found when he investigated the state of mental hospitals throughout the United States shortly after the close of World War Two, he threw out the baby with the bath water when he declared, in effect, that nobody should have to be institutionalized. The wildly popular Life Magazine gave Maisel a platform from which to launch his idea of closing all mental hospitals, also called deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill.
Helping this idea along was the development of the first generation of antipsychotic drugs in the 1950’s. Used to treat schizophrenia and other psychoses as well as acute mania, agitation and other conditions, their discovery allowed many mentally ill people once hospitalized to return to their families, hopefully with their illness under control and able to function as productive members of society in many cases. In many cases this was true, but not in all.
The advent of these new antipsychotics lent fuel to the fire of the deinstitutionalization movement, and, combined with the publicity of the atrocities perpetuated in the mental hospitals, served to throw the doors to the mental institutions wide open in the mid-1950’s.
From the mid-1950’s to the mid-1960’s, a small percentage of the eventually deinstitutionalized were released. But from that point forward, the trickle became a flood, culminating in the release of the majority of the mentally ill by the mid-1980’s. And as the mentally ill were released from the hospitals, rather than wait to see whether whether the experiment was going to work, those hospitals were closed down forever, shrinking from a high of around 550,000 beds in the mid-1950’s to around 40,000 today. As this experiment failed,the homeless and prison populations of every major city and State ballooned.
In the meantime, California was the first state to pass the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in 1967, giving the mentally ill the legal right to avoid treatment for their mental illness, regardless of how damaging that mental illness became. Unless the person was in imminent (immediate) danger of severely harming or killing themselves or someone else, they had the right to be left alone, free to wander the streets, homeless and victimized, eating out of dumpsters, lost in their own world. Other States followed their example, with the former Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, leading the charge on a national level as he ascended the highest office in the land, the Presidency.
The mistakes the do-gooders made in this two-pronged approach of first deinstitutionalizing and then arming the mentally ill with the right to refuse treatment were twofold. Their first mistake was in perceiving all hospitalization to be bad hospitalization. Secondly they assumed that anyone who has a mental illness has the presence of mind to know when to seek treatment for that illness.
Treating mental illness like any other illness, disregarding the fact that one of the symptoms of the illness can be a failure to realize they are ill, and denigrating all mental hospitals as evil are poor choices for which we have all paid dearly, in the form of the fallout from our endless supply of suicides, the incarcerated mentally ill population, the homeless population, and mentally ill people who attack and assault others.
Until we realize that mental hospitals can also be used for good, and that mentally ill people can’t always help themselves, nothing will change.
(Note: Part of my research for this article was done with the help of Dr. E. Fuller Torrey’s book The Insanity Offense. (2008).
